LOVE, TO HOLD BACK OR GO ALL IN?

People say you know you're with the right person when you don't have to think too much or be confused about where you stand with the person you love. When going into a new relationship there's every tendency that we sometimes try our possible best not to show too much of our feelings to the person we're with, they call it not " not handing too much power to the person you're with" by so doing we're able to control to some extent the level of our emotions we pour into that person or should I say relationship.

As I type this very brief write up, there are so many thoughts in my head with every single one of them struggling to take stand and truthfully I really do not know how to delve into this topic and explain in-depth as to how I feel so I can be understood but I do know one thing is for sure that at the end of this write up someone out there might get me and also know that he or she is not alone.

Growing up I can't even begin to count the number of crushes I had 😂, from the tender age of 11 my crushes ranged from old to young 😂 including the actors on tv, most especially Leonardo DiCaprio 😍 it took a long for me to get over this particular crush as my twin sister and I would always fight about who will eventually get to married to him, In my childish heart I planned to travel to the US to find him (Leonardo DiCaprio 😂) and marry immediately I came of age, ah those were the days where we had not a care in the world and just dealt with whatever came our way. Not to seem like I'm deviating, I think at the age of 12/13 I finally started to like a boy his name (John doe) we were practically neighbors, it was my first time actually crushing or should I say liking someone who wasn't on TV and the feeling was foreign, exciting and nice 😅.

As at the time I never knew what controlling your feelings were, in my childish heart I was in love and to cement that feeling I found out it was mutual 😁 we communicated with letters, not now when Gen z has turned WhatsApp into a place where they do everything, we communicated with letters, sometimes text (that's me using my mums phone and deleting the messages 😂) ah those were the days, sometimes we'd simply Just sit outside our various balconies just to catch a glimpse of each and smile 😂, that went on for well over 8 years I think and when adult hood started to creep in I started to realize that love wasn't as simple as I used to think it was.

Through out my stay in school (university) I fell in love and out of love so many times, and with each relationship that passed I tried to make changes, that is I tried the method of giving your all in a relationship only to be met with a wall, then I tried the method of not giving your all in the relationship and for a while it seemed to work but it didn't last long because I started to give the same energy he was giving and it seemed like eventually the chase for him was over and the relationship was no longer as interesting as it was to him at the beginning. It became this vicious circle of me trying over and over again to make sure that for every relationship I entered it was with caution and uncertainty. I made sure I wasn't as easy as the last relationship and I wasn't still to rigid but at the end I still ended up with a broken heart. The funny thing is I never gave up, some would say why didn't you just take a break from the dating scene? Well I did take a break, it was for a whole year and some months and when I went back into the dating scene again 😂 nothing changed, it was pretty much the same circle.

One minute I felt like I had finally found the one I wanted to spend my life with the next minute I'm thinking to myself "what led me to believe it'd work out with this guy at the beginning" 😂 oh myyyyy! Those were terrible days, eventually though I finally met someone (My husband) I won't say it was love at first sight though but I do know, from the first day I met him, I liked him, there was no denying the chemistry as we both bounced off each other's energy, we talked like we've been best of friends for ages, and his taste for music was "TOP NOTCH" don't know about now though 😂 sorry babe, but as at the time everything seemed to be going well and at some point I started to get in that space again (where there was this need to keep a tight leash of my emotions and not let it show too much that I cared for him too deeply) believe me I tried but it seemed he wasn't the type to care if you were caring or not as far as he had me in his corner he was good to go .

But as we all know, all good things must come to an end 😂 well even after trying all this the method of do not let your feelings show "I still chop breakfast 😂 and it was served hot" meaning he still broke my heart, sorry did I say "broke" he "shattered" my heart and I said to myself then and there that for any relationship that would come next I'd just take each day as it comes without thinking about putting any guard up or letting my guards down but rather just enjoy the moment and be grateful it happened.

I made that decision with plans of eventually changing scenery (relocating) but I guess it wasn't meant to be my husband(ex boyfriend) at the time reached out to me while I was in that frame of mind and was wanting to reconnect and I asked myself over and over again, are you sure you want to go down this road again? What else do you want to happen before you'd let this guy go? Is there going to be any difference from the way we were before? What made him change his mind and reach out to me? This and so many other questions plagued my mind.

Eventually we got back together and I still decided to keep going with my previous motto which was "to enjoy and take each day as it comes"and let's just say after that the rest is history. Yes we're married now 😁but on some days my mind still sneaks to that place to tell me "hmmm you're showing him you love him too much" when those thoughts come up I really do try my best to suppress it but let's just say I'm still a work in progress, I'm writing this because I really want to know and put it out there, when you're married to someone is there anything like "loving that person too much" i mean you both took a vow to do so or should your partners love for you be a yardstick or measurements for the amount of love you show them? My mum still says this to this day,"it's better for your man to be more in love with you than for you as a woman to be more in love with him" but what do you guys think?

Didn't plan for the writeup to be this long 😂 sorry y'all but what do you guys think?